Lorrie [00:00:08]:
Welcome to the Maximum Fun Agility podcast. I'm Lorrie Reynolds, owner of Maximum Fun Dog Sports. We help your agility team build your relationship, communication, confidence, and fun in training so that you can joyfully succeed on any course. In this episode, I'll give you five great reasons that you should teach your dog tricks. Teaching your dog tricks, including basic obedience behaviors, is critical to having a dog you can live with. However, training your dog brings a wealth of other benefits as well. When pet owners hear the word tricks, they think of all the cute things people teach like fetching slippers or sitting pretty. The reality is that everything we teach is a trick, and instructors use that term to include things like keeping four paws on the floor when greeting people, learning how to go to a crate, or sitting on cue.
Lorrie [00:01:02]:
With that perspective, it's easy to see why tricks are such an important thing to focus on with every dog. Here are five reasons you should teach your dog tricks. You want a dog you can live with. Teaching your dog to leave food alone, walk nicely on a leash, or get off the couch makes life with dogs a joy rather than a hassle. If you've ever envied the people whose dogs seem to listen to every word, realize that they have just taught their dogs more tricks than you have so far. There's nothing magical about training a dog who is easy to live with. It takes knowledge, practice, consistency, and patience. Reason number one to teach tricks is that tricks provide your dog with physical and mental exercise.
Lorrie [00:01:50]:
Many, if not most, destructive or disruptive behaviors occur because the dog doesn't get enough mental and physical exercise. Physical exercise is great whether it's playing a game of fetch or taking a long walk. However, mental exercise is also important. Learning new things takes energy, as you know if you've ever tried to use unfamiliar technology. Trick training can wear your dog out just as much as a three mile run. Reason number two is that tricks create a bond with your dog through positive training. Most people get dogs for the love, companionship, or to do fun activities with. It's no fun to spend time with someone who doesn't care about being around you or who doesn't listen to the things you say.
Lorrie [00:02:40]:
Training your dog creates a deeper relationship because you actually have to interact with him in a way that increases communication on both ends of the leash. You learn more about your dog and your dog learns what you want. Spending time together having fun, and yes, training is supposed to be fun, increases the bond between you. Reason number three is that you want to reduce quote unquote bad behaviors. Bad is in quotation marks for a reason. Dogs don't know there are bad behaviors until we have taught them what we want them to do. Rather than eliminating in the house, we have to teach them that we want them to eliminate outside. If we don't want them to chew on our stuff, we have to teach them what they can chew on.
Lorrie [00:03:30]:
Dogs don't come prewired with a set of cultural norms that make behavior inherently good or bad. We have to teach them what we want so they don't do what we don't want. Between sufficient mental and physical exercise and an understanding of what we want them to do, we can decrease or eliminate the behaviors we don't want, like jumping up on guests, taking food off of the counter, or chewing on our shoes. Bored dogs will create jobs to keep them busy. Tired dogs would rather rest and relax. Reason number four is an important one. You want your dog to be safe. There are four tricks that I consider critical to your dog's safety.
Lorrie [00:04:15]:
They are come when called, leave it, an emergency stop, and voluntarily leash up. We talked about the leash game in episode 28. Twice, I've dropped and broken a glass when my dogs were with me. An emergency stop and wait kept them in place until I could safely move them away. Without it, if my dogs had come rushing in to see what happened, their paws would have been cut. If you take medication or there is ever something dangerous to ingest when you're out for a walk, a leave it cue is essential. If you drop a pill or see something you don't want them to eat, having them willingly back away or leave it on the ground could save them. If your dog ever accidentally gets loose, a solid recall ensures that they will come back to you, and a get dressed that is on queue or leash up makes it simple to catch them.
Lorrie [00:05:12]:
If we are on an off leash walk, as soon as I hold the open loop of the leash out, my dogs come running to stick their heads through. It has saved me more than once when there was an unfriendly dog on the path. One final aspect of keeping dogs safe is that most dogs are taken to the shelter in the difficult teenage phase from nine to 18 months. Behavior issues are in the top five reasons for surrendering a pet. Spending time on training can eliminate difficult behavior issues and keep your pet in your household where he belongs. Reason number five is that you want your dog to learn to learn. When you started kindergarten, you probably didn't know there was a process for learning. In high school or college, you learned ways to study that worked for you, how to organize to be successful in school, and how to manage your time.
Lorrie [00:06:10]:
Dogs need to learn to learn too. Every time you teach your dog a trick, you are not only teaching the specific behavior, you are also teaching your dog about the process of learning. A dog who is clicker trained first had to learn what the sound meant and that he could influence the click by his behavior. The more you teach your dog, the better he understands the learning process, the easier it is to teach the next thing. If you've ever wondered how trainers teach so many tricks, it all comes back to this. Their dogs understand the process of learning, making it much easier to teach successive and more complex tricks. The more your dog learns, the easier it is to learn the next thing. So to recap, teaching your dog tricks, including basic obedience behaviors benefits both of you in many different ways.
Lorrie [00:07:05]:
Learn fun ways to teach things and you will never run out of activities to do with your dog. This week, either teach your dog a new trick or continue working on a trick you've already started to make it better. Thanks for listening to this episode of the Maximum Fun Agility podcast. If you are struggling to find time to train your dog, one of the many mini-courses inside The Agility Playground deals with exactly that topic. You can learn the three step process that lets you fit training time into your schedule rather than adapting your schedule to find time to train. You can check out The Agility Playground and join our community at www.maximumfundogs.com. See you next time.
